Greetings nature appreciators,
I wanted to share a little story about one of the nature observations I did with my dear friend Lauren Archer. We were both in need of some pleasant nature observations, as it had been raining and dreary most of the week, so we decided to walk down to the river near where we did our bird walk and do some observations there.
All was well at first, as we sat on the rickety picnic table doing our observation. About 5 minutes in, I noticed lots of ripples down on the river, and a few seconds later, saw some droplets of rain splatter onto my field journal. Lauren and I exchanged a horrified look – all we wanted was to avoid the rain long enough to do some nature observations!
Before we decided to pack it up and leave, Lauren had the good idea to try to do our observation from under the bridge – hurray! We could still observe our surroundings and record what we noticed without being drenched by the pouring rain.
At first, not much exciting happened, besides a pigeon and his mate doing some type of dance/hopping routine together, following each other around.
After some patience, Lauren noticed a slender, dark brown animal peeking its head out from some of the rocks. Unfortunately, it moved too fast for her to get a picture or much of a good look at it, but we moved over to where she first noticed it in hopes of getting another look. All of a sudden, we saw a dark brown flash and the animal was all the way up the bank, under the fence, and into the bushes a little ways up. We got another quick glance of its face before it disappeared back to safety, but again not a very good look.
Excited but disappointed we hadn’t seen it for longer, we started researching what it could have been. My first thought was a ferret or muskrat, but wasn’t sure if either of those lived in the area. After doing some research, Lauren and I decided we thought it was an American mink, which is shown below.
Its body seemed like the right length, it was definitely a darkish brown/gray color, and its face looked exactly like the one shown in the picture. After doing some research, we hoped to see it again. After probably 20 more minutes, we saw it watching us from behind the rocks again! We got a better look at it this time in order to get a good drawing, but neither of us could move fast enough to get a picture. I tried to follow where it went to see if i could find its home/nest/burrow, but had no such luck – and almost fell in the river a few times thanks to some loose rocks!
Although we didn’t find its home and only were able to see it for a few brief moments, it was still a really cool experience that we would not have had were it not for this class/the nature observations.
Here is a picture that i took of where i thought its home might be, but not sure exactly where:
Until next time,
Lauren (Sapone)
P.S. If you are so inclined, please enjoy the slo-mo clip linked below of me and Lauren making wishes on some dandelions at the end of our observation. 🙂